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Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Jay Cost at The Weekly Standard lays out five reasons why so many people oppose Obamacare. Each of these is explained in detail at the link.

#1: Obamacare has no legitimate funding mechanism.
#2: Obamacare has created a socially perverse array of winners and losers.
#3: Obamacare restricts choices and increases costs.
#4: Obamacare hurts businesses.
#5: Obamacare is probably unsustainable ... in the long run.

Cost concludes his piece with this comment:

[A]ny one of these objections would merit virtually uniform opposition from conservatives to Obamacare. But take them all together, and most American conservatives have arrived at the same conclusion: this law is fatally flawed, must be repealed entirely, and replaced with something that is sustainable and not overly burdensome to taxpayers, middle class families, or businesses. After all, fixing each of these problems would result in a new law that bears only the faintest resemblance to Obamacare as it is today.

Moreover, a lot of conservatives believe that liberals have the exact same opinion. While publicly applauding the expansion of coverage, some of them must understand the grave problems inherent to this law. This helps explain the sense on the right that, for liberals, this is simply a stalking horse for single payer: first, sign up new people under a federal entitlement that cannot practically be taken away, then deal with the various harms to middle class voters, burdens on businesses, and extreme cost overruns … by proposing “Medicare for all.”

Cost's argument is impressive for its depth and rigor, so how do supporters of the Affordable Care Act answer it? Well, in some liberal enclaves, like MSNBC, the response looks like this.

"You can't keep your crappy plan so just deal with it." You go girl. That'll get a lot of people on your side come November.